Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her work. I was the seniors critic for the NDP for a lot of years and the unfairness that women seniors face is, quite frankly, shocking.
When I was elected in 2015, I remember knocking on my first door and a young woman answered who had two children. She told me child care was so expensive that she was making about $30 a week. She stopped working to care for her children, but she was worried about not paying into a pension and CPP and what that would mean for her when she got older.
When I think of senior women and this situation, I see this cycle of keeping women in a place where they are going to be impoverished, where they cannot rock the boat because they do not have financial security, and that worries me. Women are often the caregivers of their families. These are women who love these men and care for them no matter what, but we are punishing them. They should not be punished for loving someone.
I have been asked why I keep calling it the gold digger clause because that is not what it is called anymore. I use that language because that is the history of this, and the impact is still the same. Until the impact changes, I am going to keep saying “gold digger” because that is the right thing to do.